pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
Sue Lenier
| birth_place = Birmingham, England | occupation = poet and playwright | birth_name = Susan Jennifer Lenier | nationality = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | influences = | influenced = | awards = | website = www.suelenier.com }} Susan Jennifer Lenier (born 9 October 1957) is an English poet and playwrightwriter. She has published two books of poetry and a number of plays. Life Lenier was born in Birmingham, England, and schooled in Tyneside. She attended Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 1980. She then spent a year writing and performing in Germany and the UK before taking a Harkness Fellowship in the United States, where she studied acting and drama at the University of California, Berkeley. Her first published collection of poems, Swansongs, was published in 1982. It received a favorable review in a British tabloid, the Daily Mirror, and led to sometimes extravagant comparisons to William Shakespeare and Charles Baudelaire. Swansongs was published while Lenier was studying in the United States, and the book and her author made enough of an impression to warrant articles by some of the best journalists of prestigious newspapers: D.J.R. Bruckner in the New York Times and Colman McCarthy in the Washington Post. She published a second volume of poems, Rain Following, also with Oleander Press. While the popular press in America and England showed great interest in Sue Lenier and her work, literary critics and academics took no notice of her work, and only one of her poems, "Finale," from her first volume, has been anthologized. Since Rain Following, her poetic career appears to have ended; her only known works since have been for the stage: Doctor's Orders, Eden Song, and Knight Fall, the last two first being performed at the Edinburgh Festival. In 1995, the New Statesman & Society published three of her poems, "Stardom," "Breakdown," and "Hospital Visit"; the magazine also reported that a radio play, A Fool And His Heart, was broadcast on Radio Three's Drama Now. According to a British website, a screenplay by Will Davies about the writing of her first book whilst a student at Cambridge has been optioned by Universal Studios. Iraqi singer, composer, and poet Kazem Al Saher, sometimes dubbed the 'Emperor of Arab Music,' commissioned Lenier to write the screenplay and English-language libretto for his musical film version of the Epic of Gilgamesh.Sure Lenier, Our Writers, Futerman, Rose & Associates 2010, Web, May 20, 2012. Writing With the publication of Swansongs, Lenier was hailed by some as a great new poet: Reed Whittemore, a former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, praised her as "a musician-poet, wholly in love with rhythm and sound"; the late Malcolm Bowie of Queen Mary, University of London, called her "an important writer." This positive praise was not universal: Christopher Reid, writing for The Sunday Times, said that she was "a striving, clumsy, humorless imitator of antiquated modes, with nothing original to say, but an earnest desire to make impressive gestures." The most often noted thing about Lenier's poetic craft was that she composed poetry in an impromptu manner and didn't seem to revise any of her work; Swansong was sent to the publisher as a first-draft copy, and in the New York Times she was quoted, "'I just write the poems straight out. At first I tried to correct a few and I didn't like the corrections, so I don't do it any more." Indeed, for her quick compositions made on the fly she was nicknamed "the possessed poet" -- though it was acknowledged that such poetic production easily leads to "superficial glibness." In the same vein, the Los Angeles Times referred to her writing as "the fastest scrawl in the west." This method of composition was looked down upon somewhat by literary critics such as John T. Shawcross (editor, critic, and bibliographer of John Milton). In his Intentionality and the New Traditionalism, discussing the "truism of the need for planning and revision", Shawcross wrote: "I am aware of such 'spontaneous' writing as that of Sue Lenier, who boasts of never altering a line after it has been put down, and of some critical assessments that have been quoted to increase sales. I rest my case on the reader's evaluation of her work." The immediate and effusive praise of her first book of poems, especially John Newton's championship of her poetry, was criticized in a book by David Holbrook, John Newton, Blasphemy and Poetic Taste."A demolition of John Newton's championship of the poet Sue Lenier. Newton claimed she was 'the only poet of our century of the order of Tennyson and comparable with Shakespeare.' This claim attracted a great deal of notice at the time (1980). Reminiscent of claims made for Laura Riding and Elizabeth Daryush." Publications Poetry *''Swansongs''. Cambridge, UK, & New York: Oleander Press, 1982. ISBN 0-906672-03-1 *''Rain Following: Poems''. Cambridge, UK: Oleander Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-906672-19-8 Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Sue Lenier, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Nov. 9, 2014. Plays Theatrical *''Doctor's Orders'' *''Eden Song'' *''Knight Fall'' Radio *''A Fool And His Heart'' (BBC 3, Drama Now) See also * List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems * Poems ;About * Sue Lenier - writer Official website. Category:1957 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Category:English poets Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:People from Birmingham, West Midlands Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Women writers Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:21st-century women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets